Originally Posted by
ashill
This sounds entirely plausible. If it's the case, the automated rebooking system offloading a passenger who in fact arrived at the gate 35 minutes before scheduled departure is insane. But if the MIA-WAS flight was delayed 75 minutes (as the 21:15 flight on July 29 was) and the OP made it 35 minutes before that delayed departure (which is not consistent with the times the OP provided), the automated booking process offloading the OP from the connecting flight makes more sense. In particular, the "boarding is closed" announcement makes sense if everyone who is on the manifest was in fact on board. (Do they make "last call" announcements when everyone they have booked on the flight is already on board? I have no idea; obviously I've never been in the waiting area when every passenger is already aboard my flight!)
What AA could do differently is not run the bloody automated rebooking process before someone actually misconnects; what looks like it will be a misconnect can always change for a variety of reasons (the connecting flight being delayed being the most obvious one) until the connecting flight is actually closed and the passenger isn't on board. I got nailed by that by a different airline recently, and it drives me crazy.
Further details from the OP would help a lot....
Plausible. Yes...but the OP tells us they showed up at the gate at 8:40pm. So if the 9:15pm was delayed 75 minutes beyond that STD...then it really is a stretch, IMO, that the OP couldn't talk to a GA in that entire time. Or in all that time not be in the boarding line / get BP scanned?
Originally Posted by
Curving River
The flight was about 9.15pm. We arrived at about 8.40pm at the gate.
Anyway OP never mentions anything about a delayed flight anywhere in this as far as I can tell? They don't mention a delay on either the original inbound (a delay would be necessary in order to trigger an offloading rebooking) or on this connection departure. That would be further useful piece of info to have clarified.
All that aside: this automated off-loading process worries me. I've yet to be affected by it, but I'm willing to bet I can make a number of connections it will think I can't.